The unforgiving minute: On January 1st, the air over the Capitol will be slightly cleaner

The reek has moved upwind to the Heritage Foundation, where it will be scarcely noticed.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina will resign from his Senate seat as of Dec. 31 to take over as head of the Heritage Foundation, his office announced Thursday.

"I honestly believe that I can do a lot more on the outside than I can on the inside," DeMint told reporters at Heritage Thursday.

How selflessly giving of you, Senator. (And how can South Carolina, a state that's had acting-out problems since before it was a state, ever find someone of his caliber to replace the man? Hint: Swing a dead _____ by the _____.)

As Charlie Pierce notes:

Nobody better personifies the casual cruelty, the reckless disregard for the general welfare, the heedless contempt for the idea of a general political commonwealth, and the deep fealty to the rising power of oligarchy in this country than does DeMint, who first rode into the Senate by arguing, among other things, that gay people should not teach in the public schools. And no institution embodies those same qualities, which fairly define modern movement conservatism, than does The Heritage Foundation, which is little more than a talking-points mill at which the primary intellectual debates seem to center on who will write this week's crapola of the op-ed page of The Washington Post, and who will be appearing with Piers Morgan that night.

So DeMint's move is textbook supply-siderism: From the meat-processing plant back upstream to the stockyard that supplies the carcasses.

From the p3 Gift Shoppe, a complimentary bumper-sticker:

Minute's up.